Would the Oriental Orthodox consider St. Augustine to be Saint? I have a read a great deal by Eastern Orthodox persons who are rather critical of him - he is too close to Rome for comfort for some of them I think.

Yes, it would, and so do the Eastern Orthodox, although they usually add something like 'for his example rather than for his teaching'.

I always stand back in admiration at the way in which all EO commentators who say this have digested the vast corpus of his work and are able to pronounce that they have nothing to learn from it. Still, as they seem equally clear that nothing written outside of Russia and Greece between 1054 and now has anything to tell them either, I suppose one should not be terribly surprised.

Austine is, of course, a Saint of the undivided Church, and the way in which the medieval Catholic Church chose to take some of his teachings on Original Sin lie at the heart of the EO distrust of him; it is part of their ongoing problem with the Catholic Church, and poor old Augustine simply gets hit by 'friendly fire', as it were.

Yes, it would, and so do the Eastern Orthodox, although they usually add something like 'for his example rather than for his teaching'.

I always stand back in admiration at the way in which all EO commentators who say this have digested the vast corpus of his work and are able to pronounce that they have nothing to learn from it. Still, as they seem equally clear that nothing written outside of Russia and Greece between 1054 and now has anything to tell them either, I suppose one should not be terribly surprised.

Austine is, of course, a Saint of the undivided Church, and the way in which the medieval Catholic Church chose to take some of his teachings on Original Sin lie at the heart of the EO distrust of him; it is part of their ongoing problem with the Catholic Church, and poor old Augustine simply gets hit by 'friendly fire', as it were.

In Christ,

John

for reasons I hope Peter can clear up, this one and some others have come up as 'admin' rather than as me - so I thought I'd better own up to any errors!

forum Wrote:I always stand back in admiration at the way in which all EO commentators who say this have digested the vast corpus of his work and are able to pronounce that they have nothing to learn from it. Still, as they seem equally clear that nothing written outside of Russia and Greece between 1054 and now has anything to tell them either, I suppose one should not be terribly surprised.

Yes John you make a good point! I think I am right in saying St. Augustine wrote the most of any of the early Saints?

My understanding is that he was always popular in the West, and it would seem that many British/Irish monasteries had some of his writings at least, but that the more 'extreme' positions that he held or that could have been developed from his teachings were always just quietly ignored.

But on the other hand I don't immediately recall him being referred to in any Oriental Orthodox text from St Cyril onwards. It would be interesting to compile those references to his teaching in the British/Irish tradition and in the Eastern tradition (esp. our own) and see which St Augustine is presented there.

I sense that it might be a different one to the anti-Pelagian one. In the controversy with St John Cassian, I am all on the side of St John, and I think that the Eastern tradition generally is so.

St. Photius saw him as a deeply holy man, but not one without error.
Some, modern, Orthodox theologians dismiss St. Augustine as a heretic.
There is a useful (and concise) text, by George Papademetriou, on the Orthodox (Greek) position vis-?-vis St. Augustine, to be found in the festschrist for Bp of Abydos, Gerasimos of blessed memory, entitled Agape and Diakonia, ed. Chamberas (1998).
It outlines the problems of St. Augustine's (and St Ambrose's) use of the filioque- although NEVER intended as part of the Creed- and how this impacts on Orthodoxy.